Finally, I Was Right About Something
…is no doubt this announcement is a complete waste of time, but not long after the post went up, Captain Sullenberger pulled off a water landing. Thanks for nothing, Sully!)…
The political debates over immigration can generate a lot of fuzzy facts. We wanted to test Americans’ knowledge — so, to wrap up our special series on immigration, we called…
For soccer fans, it’s easy. For the rest of us? Not so much, especially since the U.S. team didn’t qualify. So here’s what to watch for even if you have…
…is no doubt this announcement is a complete waste of time, but not long after the post went up, Captain Sullenberger pulled off a water landing. Thanks for nothing, Sully!)…
…is beginning to turn, and I can only hope that we will eventually stop sacrificing the world’s poor at the altar of radical environmentalism. Rudy Maisto Rudy Maisto, captain of…
For years, whale oil was used as lighting fuel, industrial lubricant, and the main ingredient in (yum!) margarine. Whale meat was also on a few menus. But today, demand for…
In a special episode of The Economics of Everyday Things, host Zachary Crockett explains what millennials do to show they care, how corrugated cardboard keeps your food warm, and why…
In 2016, David Cameron held a referendum on whether the U.K. should stay in the European Union. A longtime Euroskeptic, he nevertheless led the Remain campaign. So what did Cameron…
Adam Smith famously argued that specialization is the key to prosperity. In the N.F.L., the long snapper is proof of that argument. Just in time for the Super Bowl, here’s…
…offered a last location of the ships (including the captain) but the locations varied by as much as 100 miles, so most assumed they were lying, and none of the…
Caitlin Doughty is a mortician who would like to put herself out of business. Our corporate funeral industry, she argues, has made us forget how to offer our loved ones…
The restaurant business model is warped: kitchen wages are too low to hire cooks, while diners are put in charge of paying the waitstaff. So what happens if you eliminate…
The racial wealth gap in the U.S. is massive. We explore the causes, consequences and potential solutions. Also: another story of discrimination and economic disparity, this one perpetrated by an…
…the arbitrariness of captains and the malicious abuses of power that merchant captains were known to inflict on their crews. In a pirate democracy, a crew could, and routinely did,…
Are those travelers on their laptops just showing off? Why does V8 taste better at 35,000 feet? And why won’t Angela chat with her seatmate?…
…careers, from pet shop owner to charter boat captain to wilderness survival expert. He has also created the mechanical spiders for Arachnophobia and competed in the Comedy Central series Battlebots….
Bjørn Andersen killed 111 minke whales this season. He tells us how he does it, why he does it, and what he thinks would happen if whale-hunting ever stopped. (This…
The biggest sports league in history had a problem: While most of its players were Black, almost none of its head coaches were. So the N.F.L. launched a hiring policy…
Everyone loves to complain about it — but preparing a meal that tastes good at 35,000 feet is harder than you might think. Zachary Crockett will have the fish….
…that as captain of a ship, he always knows the answer even when he doesn’t, because the crew needs to be reassured their leader is 100% certain the actions the…
Adam Smith famously argued that specialization is the key to prosperity. In the N.F.L., the long snapper is proof of that argument. Here’s everything there is to know about a…
…few hours had retaken the ship from the pirates. The ship’s captain, however, is still being held hostage in a lifeboat, in a face-off with an American-guided missile destroyer. It’s…
How do you express yourself when you’re not sure what you want to say? What’s the number one way to get people to listen to you? And why are letters…
A conversation with former Major League Baseball player and current E.S.P.N. analyst Mark Teixeira, recorded for the Freakonomics Radio series “The Hidden Side of Sports.”…
…accident “an act of God”; others blame a company that modified the boat; there has also been talk that the captain was drinking. Now it seems only logical that someone…
…in Nazi Germany. In June 1945, Robert R. Kehoe, an Army captain who was a member of the Office of Strategic Services, traveled throughout Germany gathering information on chemical and…
College tends to make people happier, healthier, and wealthier. But how?
Would you be more adventurous if you had more structure? Do you multitask while brushing your teeth? And what would Mike’s perfect brother Peter do?…
Reginald Dwayne Betts spent more than eight years in prison. Today he’s a Yale Law graduate, a MacArthur Fellow, and a poet. His nonprofit works to build libraries in prisons…
The gist: the Nobel selection process is famously secretive (and conducted in Swedish!) but we pry the lid off, at least a little bit.
It’s awkward, random, confusing — and probably discriminatory too.
